Tenure Fight Takes New Form

Professor Who Declined Job Security Says His Texas School Held It Against Him

By

Tom Fowler and

Douglas Belkin

Dec. 7, 2012 6:29 p.m. ET

As a professor,
James C. Wetherbe
recognized the advantages that tenure provided. In his other roles as a board member and business consultant, though, he sensed that it sometimes undercut the credibility of his advice to clients and companies.

"I would get wisecracks…that it was easy for me to make some statements because I had a guaranteed job," Mr. Wetherbe said. "So I decided to resign tenure."

ENLARGE

James C. Wetherbe, shown this week at Texas Tech in Lubbock, says he believes tenure can allow ineffective teachers to remain at schools.
David Bowser for The Wall Street Journal

Now Mr. Wetherbe claims in a federal lawsuit that his views on tenure have spurred officials at Texas Tech University, the Lubbock school he joined in 2000, to oppose his advancement, including to business-school dean. He calls it an ironic twist to the argument that tenure helps ensure academic freedom.

Mr. Wetherbe, an information-technology expert who formerly served on
Best Buy
Co.
's board of directors, maintains in the lawsuit filed this past week that Texas Tech has violated his First Amendment rights by penalizing him for his views on tenure when considering him for promotions.

"My academic freedom is being challenged for my views on tenure, yet I'm taking on this battle without having the protection of tenure," said Mr. Wetherbe, 64 years old.

Victor Mellinger, a lawyer for Texas Tech, declined to comment on the specifics of the suit but said the university "hired the best candidate" for its business-school dean.

Mr. Wetherbe has held tenured positions at other universities but said he grew to oppose the practice, because he believes it can allow ineffective teachers to remain at schools while driving up student costs. The professor said his position on tenure is appreciated by the businesses he consults with outside of the university, where he has earned most of his money.

"But I didn't do it to give me a competitive advantage in the consulting world," he said. "I did it to eliminate any obstacles to people taking my ideas as honest and authentic."

When he joined Texas Tech in 2000 to take an endowed chair in information technology, administrators accepted him for the post despite his desire to remain nontenured.

But in the past year, he claims, Texas Tech Provost Bob Smith blocked his nomination for two promotions—one to a named professorship given to academics highly regarded in their field, and the other to be dean of the Rawls College of Business—due in part to his views on tenure.

A university grievance committee recommended he be reconsidered for the professorship after he was initially blocked from receiving the honorary title. Peers had recommended he be one of four finalists for the dean's post.

Mr. Smith said he couldn't discuss the lawsuit or issues surrounding Mr. Wetherbe's initial hiring, but he said Texas Tech policy requires those with the titles of associate professor or professor to have tenure—an interpretation of school policy that Mr. Wetherbe disputes.

"Clearly, we have no bias against anyone and we certainly give them the opportunity to choose tenure or not, but if they want the title of professor they have to be on the tenure track," Mr. Smith said.

In a deposition in a libel suit Mr. Wetherbe filed against another Texas Tech professor, Mr. Smith testified that he thought it would be unfair for Mr. Wetherbe, if he were business-school dean, to make tenure recommendations for faculty members because he didn't believe in the practice.

Mr. Smith said tenure is necessary because "faculty have to be free and unfettered in their pursuit of truth and should not be terminated because of a certain opinions or points of view."

Texas Tech has paid a price for the Wetherbe situation: Bobby Stevenson, a longtime benefactor of the business school who funded Mr. Wetherbe's academic chair, said he withdrew four annual scholarships and rescinded a $9 million gift he planned for the university.

"When it started coming out how these decisions [about Mr. Wetherbe] were made, I decided I was done," said Mr. Stevenson, the co-founder of information-technology company
Ciber
Inc.

Tenure gives an academic worker a contractual right not to have his or her position terminated without just cause. Use of the practice at American universities began a century ago at a time when university governing boards sometimes fired professors for their political views.

A backlash against the practice came almost immediately, but tenure has largely weathered criticism—including from conservatives in the 1960s who argued that liberal professors at public universities were imposing their views on young people, said Matthew Finkin, a law professor at the University of Illinois and an advocate for tenure.

By 1975, 57% of all full-time college teachers either were tenured or on a tenure track, according to the American Association of University Professors. Since then, tenure has been in decline, primarily due to fiscal concerns. As state governments cut aid to public universities, administrators are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjunct faculty who generally are paid per class, receive few benefits and work without long-term contracts.

By 2009, tenured or tenure-track professors made up 30% of all faculty.

"What's happening now is much more insidious," said Mr. Finkin. This decline in tenure is "a disaster for the future of higher education," he added.

Opponents of tenure maintain the academic-freedom argument is overstated. Few professors are assailed on political grounds, said Mark Taylor, a religion professor at Columbia University who wrote a book arguing that schools should hire professors for seven-year terms. "Tenure is really about job security," he said.

Jay Conover, a tenured statistics professor at Texas Tech who nominated Mr. Wetherbe to the named professorship, said he doesn't think tenure helps or hurts teachers. "If they want to get rid of you, they can," Mr. Conover said.

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